The Council of Agriculture (COA) yesterday pledged to seek negotiations with Singapore on the resumption of pork exports, which have been suspended in the wake of the latest foot-and-mouth outbreak in Taiwan.
Singapore’s Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) said on Thursday it was suspending imports of pork and pork products from Taiwan in the wake of the report of foot-and-mouth infections at two hog farms in Yunlin and Changhua counties earlier this month.
COA Vice Minister Wang Cheng-teng (王政騰) said the Singaporean authorities had been informed of the outbreak and that pork exporters had also taken the initiative to withhold exports to Singapore.
Wang said chances were good that exports could be resumed, as Singapore does not raise hogs of its own but relies on imports.
Singapore banned pork imports from Taiwan in 1997 following an earlier outbreak and only lifted the ban in 2007.
AVA data show that Singapore imported 999 tonnes of pork and pork products from Taiwan last year, which accounted for less than 1 percent of Singapore’s pork and pork product market.
Nevertheless, Singapore is a significant market for Taiwan’s farmers, with more than half of the nation’s annual exports of around 1,400 tonnes of fresh or frozen pork going to Singapore in recent years, COA figures show.
Before the 1997 outbreak of foot-and-mouth — a highly contagious viral disease that mainly affects cloven-hoofed animals — Taiwan raised as many as 12 million hogs per year, with 7 million being exported to Japan, the council said.
Taiwan now raises around 6.4 million hogs a year, mainly for domestic consumption.
The latest foot-and-mouth outbreak occurred just as the nation was working toward the goal of being listed as a country free of foot-and-mouth disease, after having been recognized by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) as a “foot-and-mouth-free country with vaccination” thanks to its efforts to eliminate the disease over the past decade.
As a result of the outbreak, the wholesale price of hogs in Taiwan dropped from NT$60.89 per kilogram on Wednesday to NT$57.25 per kilogram on Thursday.
In a bid to stabilize hog prices, hog farmers agreed on Thursday to reduce pork production by 5 percent after discussing the issue with the COA.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS